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A review by jeanetterenee
Island: The Complete Stories by Alistair MacLeod
4.0
April 21, 2014: Rest in peace, Alistair MacLeod. Died April 20, 2014. I have been meaning to re-read this collection since I first read it almost six years ago. Now is a good time for me to do that, in memory of this extraordinary storyteller.
YOWZA, this guy can write! Holy prose, Batman!
4.5 stars for this beauty of a book.
This is a collection of sixteen stories, published between 1968 and 1999. All of the stories take place on or near the author's native Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. He writes with such a quiet beauty about the local people and landscape, as the people go about making a living at fishing, coal mining, raising animals, and so on.
My favorite three stories:
BEST: "Island"----This story knocked my socks off. He managed to get all the elements of a fine novel in a story of only forty-four pages. It's about a woman who is the last in a long family line of lighthouse keepers. It's spooky and beautiful and heartbreaking all at once. I found myself weeping a few pages from the end, and when I finished the story, I couldn't read anything else for hours afterward. I was absolutely stunned, and I still get chills thinking about this story. DAMN! Did I happen to mention this guy can WRITE?! (Are you rolling your eyes at me yet?)
#2) "The Lost Salt Gift of Blood"
#3) "To Everything There is a Season"
There was only one story I wasn't all that thrilled with: "Second Spring." It wasn't terrible, just so-so for me.
YOWZA, this guy can write! Holy prose, Batman!
4.5 stars for this beauty of a book.
This is a collection of sixteen stories, published between 1968 and 1999. All of the stories take place on or near the author's native Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. He writes with such a quiet beauty about the local people and landscape, as the people go about making a living at fishing, coal mining, raising animals, and so on.
My favorite three stories:
BEST: "Island"----This story knocked my socks off. He managed to get all the elements of a fine novel in a story of only forty-four pages. It's about a woman who is the last in a long family line of lighthouse keepers. It's spooky and beautiful and heartbreaking all at once. I found myself weeping a few pages from the end, and when I finished the story, I couldn't read anything else for hours afterward. I was absolutely stunned, and I still get chills thinking about this story. DAMN! Did I happen to mention this guy can WRITE?! (Are you rolling your eyes at me yet?)
#2) "The Lost Salt Gift of Blood"
#3) "To Everything There is a Season"
There was only one story I wasn't all that thrilled with: "Second Spring." It wasn't terrible, just so-so for me.